Breaking News

Tinkering with Toy Trains

Cheryl Wade

Published 9:00 pm, Thursday, August 15, 2002

Daily News NINA GREIPEL

Bob Bubeck, a research scientist at Mid-Michigan Molecular Institute, collects and displays his train collection of more than 300 locomotives and cars in his basement. He still has his first train set that he got when he was 3 years old. He said part of the reason he collects trains is, "when you were a kid there were trains that you just couldn't have, now that you're an adult, you can."

No one in the real world would expect to ride through bustling cities in a brightly gleaming turquoise car on a three-rail track. But in Bob Bubeck's basement, it's a fanciful dream come to life.

Midlander Bubeck collects toy trains and chronicles their history. Electric-train realists talk about cars that are precisely scaled-down models of real trains, but Bubeck likes to think about how children  including himself  played with them.

"One part of model railroading is to make a layout as realistic as possible," Bubeck said. "The interesting thing is, no matter how hard you work at it, how real is it? It's only an approximation. The thing about toy trains is that they are the real thing," he said.

Lionel made the three-track system before World War II. With the electrical wiring of that day, trains would have shorted out going around switchbacks on two rails. The design is "practical but not very realistic," Bubeck said.

Bubeck's trains chug-chug on tracks beside real lichen, roads made of parakeet gravel and mountains made of crinkled paper. Bells ring at a crossing gate. With a bank of dials and buttons that light up like Christmas, Bubeck can make a train chug-chug into a "talking station." It rolls out as the conductor announces "All aboard! The Continental Limited!" in a voice that sounds as if it came from an old 78 rpm record.

In another place, two workmen work with jackhammers at the side of the tracks. The jackhammers rat-a-tat until the train approaches and a flagman moves out. When the train chugs by, the workmen return to their job.

"That's a kind of a scarce accessory," Bubeck said.

Some of the cars have imaginative detailing. One passenger car is made so the roof can be removed to reveal tiny people in seats inside it. His long, sleek Blue Comet is turquoise, more fanciful than the blue of the real train, which took passengers from Newark to Atlantic City.

Hundreds of toy train cars sit parked on narrow shelves that reach at least 6 feet high. At the top stands an American Flyer Silver Rocket set Bubeck got for Christmas in 1953 when he was 7. Not wishing to strap Santa financially, his father told Bubeck he could ask for just the hunter-green engine. But when Christmas morning came, the two cars, too, had arrived.

Toy trains in the 1850s were made of wood covered with lithograph paper, Bubeck said. Children pulled or pushed them across the floor. Next came wind-up trains powered by springs. Just before the turn of the century, American and German companies began making electric trains.

Bubeck's knowledge of toy trains has resulted in a collectors' book he co-authored with David Garrigues. The book is a history and price guide to American Flyer's S gauge trains. Gauge refers to the spaces between the rails.

Now that he's a grown-up, Bubeck can buy the trains he'd always wanted as a kid. He now sees the trains as artifacts of the industrial age.

"You can look at how we changed the way we manufacture things," he said. "The other thing is, they're pretty. They're pretty toys."